Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today are facing increasingly difficult challenges brought about by the online economy.

Online Challenges For Accounting Firms

Certified Public Accountants today must work harder than ever before to remain in business. Not only do they have to become actively involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop an active web presence. This includes having a website and searching for better ways to grow your business services online.

In addition to investing dollars advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated to develop and manage a website that will bring new clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help increase your reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and some aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires having a well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accounting firms (and most professions) face with their websites, is that you have an average of thirty seconds to help users find what they are looking for or they will find what they are looking for elsewhere.

“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”

Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website

Online Opportunities For Accountants

As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that can adapt to meet the challenges of the digital economy and think strategically when it comes to improving their online marketing skills.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn ways to attract and engage new visitors and establish online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress platform to power your accounting or financial services website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:

• Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Customers
• The Complete Guide To Building A Successful Business With A WordPress Site

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

This section explains how to improve your accounting website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting website, see this detailed step-by-step guide: Planning Your Website: A Useful Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Basic Pages

Professional websites require some essential web pages. Let’s go over these.

Services Page

It’s essential to include a page that explains your products or services.

This page will include services such as:

• Business accounting – planning, company formation, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate finance
• Wealth creation
• Superannuation/retirement plan (401k) advice
• Audit risk assessment and assurance
• Quickbooks – setup, training, tune up, and support
• Specialist services – mergers, acquisitions, information technology, secretarial, rentals, trusts, fiduciary accounting, succession planning, selling businesses, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us Page

This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

This page should also list any accounting awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above your competitors.

(List all of your awards recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc. in your About Us page. Screenshot image sourced from: deloitte.com)

Team Profile

Are you looking for quicker and simpler ways to grow your business online? Then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your visitors to get to know, like and trust you and your organization better.

You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow individual staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline your employee’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Image source: deepsky.com)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-update simple team directory to WordPress using a free plugin, go here: Tutorial: How To Add A Staff Directory To Your Site

Recruitment Page

List any career opportunities within the firm. It could include training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. You should also include information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Include also a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials & Case Studies

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to show potential clients what kind of accounting solutions you are capable of implementing to help them solve their problems. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients, you are also helping to provide social proof.

(Add a web page with reviews from clients and case studies. Screenshot image sourced from: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively about using client testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online. You can learn more here: Create Better Results Online With Meaningful Customer Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following:

• Name
• Physical address
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Interactive chat feature (optional feature)

If your business services different locations you should make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

Consider also including a few links for commonly-asked questions, useful pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like company news, product releases, educational information, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an accounting website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your services.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting or financial services website is very hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your business website and blog.

Something few businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that can instantly drive web traffic to your business, simply by adding regular content to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate traffic automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more: WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Getting More Traffic For Your Business Automatically

Legal Information

It’s crucial for professional organizations to have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional or federal laws or regulations wherever you provide services to.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting or financial services website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s highly competitive online economy, being generous with content that educates and informs visitors has become one of the key success factors for businesses.

Providing great content with useful information and tips will get your readers sharing your content with others and coming back for more. Publishing content is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your products and services.

For example, for an accounting or financial services business, topics can include the following:

• How balance sheets work
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• Structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your prospective clients understand your accounting or financial services, such as forensic accounting, small business accounting, using office accounting software, reducing business debt, understanding accounting conventions, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords and terms in your articles that your prospective clients will be searching for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Experience

Improving your user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and UX.

Syndicating Content With RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide plenty of benefits for your site.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your content updates are in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides links to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your website from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content for your website by searching online for relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are a few feeds you may want to consider adding to your accounting website:

• Taxation Policy Center: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/press/rss.cfm
• Australian Taxation Office: https://www.ato.gov.au/RSS-news-feeds.aspx
• Canada Revenue Agency: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/rssfeeds/
• UK HM Revenue and Customs: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rss/rss.htm
• South Africa Revenue Service: http://www.sars.gov.za/Pages/RSS-Feeds.aspx

(RSS feeds can help to improve your accounting site’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your audience. They can give them useful instructions and resources to complete tasks. Checklists and forms are great planning tools.

You can provide online or downloadable forms and checklists covering a range of topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Company Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

Providing useful tools and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools to add to accounting websites. Other tools could include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2 of this guide, we look at a several WordPress plugins and themes you can add to your website that can help to improve seo, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of section 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to grow your accounting business web presence.

Click on this link to access Part 2:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

Get Notified When New Tutorials Are Published – Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!

***

***

***